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You’re a safe driver. Other drivers, pedestrians, and your car insurance company appreciate it. In fact, your car insurance company might even show their appreciation by offering you a discount for your safe driving.

But wouldn’t it be cool if your discount was based on exactly how well you drive? And if you could save even more based on how little you drive?

We thought so. That’s why we introduced the DriveSense® discount.

Pay as you drive with the DriveSense® discount

In our never-ending quest to find drivers new and smarter ways to save on their car insurance, we couldn’t help but wonder, “What if there was a device that could tell exactly how well a driver was doing behind the wheel? Even better, what if it rewarded them with a discount tailor-made to their awesome driving skills?”

“Sounds like a good idea,” we thought. And after a period of testing and tinkering, we released our usage-based insurance device, DriveSense® to drivers in the great state of Texas.

Why just Texas, you ask? Well, a fully detailed answer would probably bore you (and me) to tears, but the gist is that we wanted to see how well the device and discount worked before rolling it out to the rest of the country.

So far, things are looking pretty darn good in Texas, which means DriveSense® could be coming to your state soon.

How the DriveSense discount works

When you sign up for the DriveSense program, we’ll send you a small telematic device that you plug into your car’s onboard diagnostics (OBD) port. Standard in most cars since 1996, the OBD port simply allows access to your car’s internal computer (which can tell how fast you drive, how often you brake, etc.). The DriveSense® telematic device is able to send, receive, and store that info via telecommunication. Don’t worry though, we make sure your info stays private and secure.

That’s really it. You’ll immediately score a 5 percent discount just for installing the device, and depending on how safely and how much you drive, you could save as much as 30 percent!

Huge, right?

What you can do with the DriveSense® device

The DriveSense® program isn’t just about giving safe drivers some sweet, sweet savings. When you sign up for the program, you’ll get access to a personalized website where you can review and analyze your driving (and compare it with others’ as well). Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see how many times you were a little lead-footed, when you had to brake a little harshly, and how many miles you drove recently (among other things).

You can even set up notifications that’ll let you know as soon as you do … well, just about anything. Want to know if you topped 70 yesterday? You got it. Prefer to be notified when you’ve driven over 100 miles in a day? No problem. How about if your son is out driving past curfew while you’re off on a business trip? Done.

Which leads us to another use for DriveSense®: teaching.

Help young drivers be better drivers

With access to all that data, you can more effectively monitor your young driver’s performance and proactively troubleshoot any behaviors that aren’t so great. You can even set up driver-specific notifications to let you know about your son or daughter’s driving. So, if you notice young Danny tends to hit the brakes a little hard, you can combine custom notifications with a little one-on-one driver training to correct the problem.

You can’t be with your young driver every time they get behind the wheel, but with DriveSense®, you can still get a good idea of how well they’re doing out there on the road.

Why Esurance likes DriveSense® … and you might too

As noted in a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, “insurance carriers have traditionally evaluated risk based on criteria such as age, gender, marital status, and vehicle type.” And statistics show that those criteria work pretty well. But with a pay-as-you-drive system like DriveSense®, we can move beyond such generalized ratings to provide you with more personalized savings.

Let us know what you think!

Are you interested in personalizing your savings with programs like DriveSense®? Let us know!

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about John

John Moore Williams has spent his writing career providing advice on everything from proper septic system care to where to eat in Nice (and, during his tenure at Esurance, how to find the right insurance coverages). An avid descriptive grammarian, he encourages you to end sentences with prepositions and to split infinitives whenever possible.